/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */
package org.drools.drl.parser;

import java.util.List;

import org.drools.drl.ast.descr.ConstraintConnectiveDescr;

/**
 * This is a helper class that provides helper methods to parse expressions
 * using both the DRLExpressions parser and the DRLExprTree parser.
 */
public interface DrlExprParser {

    /** Parse an expression from text */
    ConstraintConnectiveDescr parse( final String text );

    String getLeftMostExpr();

    /**
     * @return true if there were parser errors.
     */
    boolean hasErrors();

    /**
     * @return a list of errors found while parsing. 
     */
    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    List<DroolsParserException> getErrors();
}
